


he has my dying voice

by capricornia



Category: Hamlet - Shakespeare, SHAKESPEARE William - Works
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ghosts, M/M, Poor Horatio, i mean it's kind of canon compliant too, major character death bc hamlet dies at the very beginning, posting to encourage myself to write more
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-03
Updated: 2018-01-03
Packaged: 2019-02-27 22:20:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13257780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/capricornia/pseuds/capricornia
Summary: It only comes to him later, when he's standing on the wall daring the wind to push him over, daring the trees to rush up and meet him from five stories away, that Hamlet was always about fifty percent brilliant at making plans.Or, the one where Hamlet gives the gift of ghost-sight to Fortinbras, then haunts the castle and helps out in Denmark.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Okay basically the premise is you bequeath your gift of ghost-sight onto someone and then they can see ghosts.

Horatio half-laughs, hysterical in the candlelight. Hamlet's always been fifty percent horrible at planning things out.

 _I do prophesy the_ _election lights_ , he says _,_   _on_ _Fortinbras_. _He has my dying voice_.

Horatio shakes his head, unable to speak, silently telling his prince no, no, no, no. He can see the intent with which Hamlet forms his words, and Horatio wants to ask him, _What good can possibly come of this?_

Horatio bends to kiss the poison off his lips, but Hamlet puts a rapidly-weakening hand on his chest and pushes him away.  
He touches Horatio again, a light touch this time, directly over the heart, and looks at Horatio so sweetly it would make him want to cry, if there weren't already rivers of tears rolling down his face, off his chin and nose, onto Hamlet's stained shirt. _I love you_ , his prince's eyes say, his Hamlet. He moves his fingers, tenderly stroking. It's his last couple of breaths now; Horatio can hear it.

Hamlet gestures vaguely with his other hand in the direction of everyone else still standing shell-shocked in the hall. "And the rest," he half-sighs, half gurgles, fist clenched in Horatio's shirt and eyes beseeching Horatio that this is important, "is--silence." He breathes out, then in, then--

Horatio leans down onto him so he doesn't have to feel Hamlet's hand slackening against his chest.

He's still like that when Fortinbras comes in. Fortinbras, who has no idea what Hamlet just got him into. The thought of it makes Horatio want to laugh again, and he does--a high, keening sound. To think, the Norwegian prince came with an army to invade, and found the people willing and the royals all dead in a line on the floor! Claudius's parting gift to Fortinbras was surely a people who were fucking ready for a change in rulership, and Hamlet gave him the fucking gift of--

 _God_ , Horatio thinks, _Hamlet. You idiot, you fucking dramatic and scholarly man--_

 _What good can come of this?_ he thinks again, and he can hear Hamlet speak clearly in his head, as if he were right next to Horatio, as if he were still fucking here--"you're the scholar; you figure it out."

Horatio tells Fortinbras everything. Well, almost. There are some things he needs for the foreign prince not to know about the situation--exactly how many times Hamlet crawled into Horatio's bed during those restless nights, for example, or what exactly Hamlet asked him to steal books on from Wittenburg--ever the scholar, yet ever so dramatic--or what Hamlet decided to use his last breaths to say.

He'll find out about all of that anyway, eventually, and Horatio hopes to be long gone on some important mission but knows he'll probably be long-buried in the ground, not even next to his prince, by that time.

He actually finds out about some of it on the first day, because Horatio makes the mistake of showing the Swedish prince everyone's rooms, and Claudius's has a chair and several knives and various bottles filled with lord-knows-what, Gertrude's has bottles filled with perfume, Hamlet's has books and quills and artfully strewn-about ripped-up love notes and ramblings--designed, of course, to make it look like he was going mad--and Horatio's has more books and a lot of Hamlet's normal stuff: his hair comb, his clothes (Fortinbras coughs and looks away; he knows what princely robes look like as opposed to anything Horatio owns), a couple of uneaten biscuits that Horatio hates on the small table Hamlet always used to bump his leg on. It's all so normal and mundane Horatio doesn't know what to do with himself for a second.

Fortinbras doesn't say anything; there's nothing to say.

He takes Claudius's rooms and gives Horatio Polonius's old ones, plus Hamlet's and his own. He tells Horatio he'd like him to be his chief advisor, being actually from Denmark and all. Horatio doesn't tell him to go fuck himself and doesn't just run out to the castle walls where this whole mess began in the first place and jump off, and counts it as a win.


	2. Chapter 2

It takes a month for the first signs to show - a month after the burial, which is a month after That Day Number Two, as it’s now labeled in Horatio’s head (That Day Number One being the day Hamlet Sr. showed up and started the whole mess).

Horatio’s been acting as Fortinbras’s chief advisor for six weeks when Fortinbras mentions it. They're in what Fortinbras has designated as his office, looking over the budget for the castle, because Fortinbras wants to throw a feast for the people of Elsinore.

“Not just the castle,” he's assured Horatio at least four times, “but for the town, too.”

He's crazy, Horatio thinks, but he talks about whatever Fortinbras wants to talk about, and he feels relieved that he has something to do.

There are two cousins that have valid claims to the throne, so Fortinbras wants to invite them to the feast, too, to show that he has no hard feelings and that he won't kill them.

“My liege,” Horatio begins, about to tell the Norse prince all about the personalities of Wilhelm and Joseph. _My lord_ , he hears in his own voice, and for a moment he thinks he hears Hamlet calling, just beyond the corridor.

“Horatio, tell me this,” Fortinbras interrupts, apropos of nothing. “Is this castle frequented by ghosts?”

Horatio freezes. Just like that, the waiting is over, and Hamlet’s last deed begins to make itself apparent. He can see his prince’s face again, slacking on the floor, and there's a rush in his ears - when did that start? - and he sees himself pushing a dagger into Hamlet’s -

That's not how he remembers it. He blinks and realizes he's shaking. The room seems too dark, too gloomy, and it takes him a bit to recognize Fortinbras sitting across from him.

“Horatio?” Horatio nods. He doesn't think he can speak just yet. “Tell me if this castle is haunted,” Fortinbras commands. “Though I can assume from thy reaction that there is something amiss.”

“My liege,” Horatio whispers. He thinks of Marcellus, of Marcellus telling him what happened, of telling Hamlet, of old Hamlet’s ghost - it's all his fault, really; he should never have gotten his prince into the whole mess. If it hadn't happened, Hamlet would be moping around like any normal person whose parent has gotten remarried, Ophelia would be alive, and Horatio would be back at school by now, probably, instead of in this musty old office - if he hadn't gotten Hamlet involved -

He ought to tell Fortinbras everything, but he won't be the one to get two princes killed. So instead he gathers up his courage and says, “Have you seen anything to indicate that there are ghosts at Elsinore?”

Fortinbras has. Nothing has been moved - Fortinbras isn't sure if ghosts can move things anyway, and Horatio doesn't want to tell him he doesn't think they can, and anyway, he probably doesn't know enough about ghosts to come down one way or the other on the issue - and there's no mysterious notes left on mirrors or anything. But Fortinbras says he keeps seeing someone out of the corner of his eye. It's mostly in the mornings and in the middle of the night that he sees it, he says. Horatio notices the way he glances around and remembers that the prince has seemed quite jumpy in the last fortnight or so. The bottom of his stomach settles in, cold. _Mostly in the mornings and in the middle of the night_. Horatio remembers Hamlet talking about his father at university. What had he said? He liked to take walks in the mornings, and was sometimes to be found wandering the halls at night? He certainly remembers, in the early years of college, staying at Elsinore and having to creep around, listening for the king’s footsteps, as he made his way from the guest rooms to the rooms of the royal prince.

 _Hamlet_ , he prays, thinking of his prince’s eyes, the curve of his face, his royal robes and his smile, _why can't you reconcile everything with your father from heaven? Why does he still plague us?_ And, much less of a prayer: _Did you love me so poorly you had to die without this being resolved?_

 _Idiot_ , he thinks to himself. The new king is asking his advice, and here he is praying to his dead lover. Hamlet’s an idiot too, though, he thinks, equal parts fond and angry. To think that with his dying words, he'd do something good? All he did was to dump his problems on Fortinbras, who didn't even have any part in the whole mess until Hamlet gave him one. And here Horatio had thought Hamlet loved the people of Denmark more than his family and the drama that went on in the castle.

“Horatio?” Fortinbras breaks him out of his thoughts.

“My liege, I was thinking of the books I have read on spirits,” Horatio lies, and quickly tries to recall what all those books Hamlet had made him get had said. “I do believe, if you want to be certain of the existence of this apparition, you must try to communicate with it.”

“Tell me truly, Horatio, am I - are we - the first person thou knowest of to commune with spirits in this castle?”

Horatio fights through the buzzing in his ears ( _the rest is silence_ ) and shakes his head. “No, my liege.”

Fortinbras raises an eyebrow.

“If the spirit wishes to communicate, it may only wish to speak to one person. Do not feel insulted, my liege, if the apparition does not wish to speak with you. They do - from what I have read - usually appear only for a certain purpose, and then are gone.”

Fortinbras nods after a moment, then turns back to the count of livestock in the castle.

 _Why is old Hamlet’s ghost still here?_ Horatio wonders. The pages in front of him give him no answer.


End file.
